Wednesday, March 12, 2014

ACN News -ACN to open offices in Mexico and South Korea

Catholic charity Aid
to the Church in Need (ACN) has announced that it will open new offices in
Mexico and South Korea later this year.

ACN’s presence in both
countries, including its first in Asia, means that the charity will have 19
national offices dedicated to encouraging prayer for suffering Christians,
raising awareness of their plight and collecting donations in support of the
charity’s mostly pastoral projects around the world.

The charity is also
strengthening its connections with benefactors in Malta by staging a conference
there on religious freedom.

Commenting on the new
offices planned for Mexico and South Korea, Baron Johannes Heereman, the
Executive President of ACN, stated, “Further countries can contribute to the
expansion of ACN’s commitment to its service to the evangelizing, needy and
persecuted Church.”

“On the initiative and
with the assistance of our office in Madrid, we have decided to make a start in
Mexico.”

“And, with the
agreement of the local Bishops’ Conference, we have also decided on South Korea
because it is an economically developed country in which the Catholic Church is
growing, and because to date we have absolutely no representation in Asia.”

The preparations for
the new offices are in full swing and both are scheduled to open in the second
half of 2014.

Baron Heereman said,
“Our Spanish colleagues advocated the opening of an office in Mexico because
our charity receives many communications and requests from that country.”

The Executive
President added that the preparations are now reaching their conclusion
following the agreement of the Archbishops of Mexico and Guadalajara in the
country’s Jalisco state.

He pointed out that
legal questions are still being clarified and that staff recruitment is
underway.

ACN’s existing
national offices are in different countries across Europe as well as in
Australia, Canada, the U.S., Brazil and Chile.

Building on the close
contacts it has built up with benefactors there, the UK office, based in
Sutton, is supporting the charity’s development in Malta.

An ACN congress on
international religious freedom will be held in Malta on May 12th,
2014, in the presence of the President of ACN, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza.

The conference will
bring together benefactors and supporters from Malta and from around the world
to hear expert speakers on the challenges of persecution and oppression of
Christians in the Middle East and parts of Africa.

ACN, which was founded
by the late Dutch Norbertine priest Father Werenfied van Straaten, has
supported the Church in need for more than 65 years.

Pope Benedict XVI
named ACN a Pontifical Foundation in 2011.

The charity receives
no public or Church funds for its work and is dependent on the generosity of
donors. The work of ACN is supported by 600,000 benefactors around the world.

Last year the charity
supported more than 5,000 projects in 130 countries around the world.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the
Holy Father, Aid to the Church in Need supports
the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need.
ACN is a Catholic charity - helping to bring Christ to the world through
prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Father Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul
II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity,” the organization is now at work
in over 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including
providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church
buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since
the initiative’s launch in 1979, 43 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed
worldwide.

For more information contact Michael Varenne at
michael@churchinneed.org or call
718-609-0939 or fax718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street,
PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. www.churchinneed.org

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